Inveterate traveler Jan Morris's books on Venice, Manhattan, and Trieste have made her "our greatest living travel writer" (Paul Theroux). Reflecting here on a half century of travel on six continents, Morris writes not about the destinations but about the people she has encountered, and introduces us to hundreds of memorable characters, from the Sherpa guide who first scaled Mt. Everest to the lascivious Manhattan cabbie, and the proverbial spy in a raincoat. Here too are insightful portraits of the famous—Harry Truman and King Hussein, for example—and of the infamous, including Adolf Eichmann.

"The most delightful, intelligent, perceptive collection of human observations I've ever read: I don't know of anything like it."—Alberto Manguel